Chennai floods:
The inclusive disaster
by Gopl S. Warriar
Murugan cleans my car in the mornings, and also that of many others
in my apartment complex. I see him only on Saturdays, when he collects
the key for cleaning the inside of my car. When the big floods came
early December, Murugan did not report to work for many days. That was
not unusual, because many in Chennai could not travel to work during
those deluged days.
He appeared more than a week later. Like everybody else in Chennai,
he also had a story to tell. On Wednesday, 2 December morning at 3 am,
his cot felt wet. He woke up to rising waters in his room. He came out
without having time to collect any of his belongings. He sent his wife
and four-year -old child to her village by bus, and stayed in a rescue
centre for the remaining days of the week.
When he recalled how the water from the Chembarambakkam reservoir
flowing through the Adayar River took away his belongings, he repeated
about losing his supply of rice, dhal and salt, underlining how the
water swept away even the most basic of his needs.
Great leveller
The November-December Chennai flood was in some way a great leveller.
Usually in cities, it is the poor and marginal that occupy the most
marginal lands. And this usually happens in the banks of neglected
waterways. The banks of Adayar River, which flooded with rain water and
also the water from Chembarambakam reservoir is both a priced real
estate and marginal land at the same time.
If Murugan rented a room near Adayar River because of lower rents,
the floodplains of the river also houses the richest and most powerful
in the city. The picture that went viral on social media was of a
leading industrialist being rescued from his Kotturpuram estate in a
boat. Also, among those affected badly were senior government officials
living in Manapakkam.
At least this made the disaster an inclusive one. Needless to say
there was certain subaltern glee in the comments that followed the
social media pictures of elderly industrialist and his wife in a fishing
boat, or of the private jets that dashed against structures in the
flooded airport.
But more important, there was the consolation that the floods did not
spare anybody, rich or poor.
This is of great importance at a practical level. Everybody in
Chennai had felt the pain in some way or the other, and in that sense
has a responsibility to ensure that this does not happen again.
The theme that keeps returning in all conversations in post-flood
Chennai is fact that the Adayar River rose almost without any warning.
It was not as if a cloudburst or a dam breach that caused the deluge in
the river, but heavy rains from a low pressure condition which the
residents of the city were aware of days in advance. And it was also not
as if this was an isolated event. There had been copious rains from the
first week of November 2015, with very heavy showers in middle and later
part of the month, and the reservoirs were getting filled to the brim.
If excess water was released through the river in the interim period
between the two events, then the deluge and the cost to life and
property could have been avoided.
Wrong decisions
Nature contributed the rains, but human decisions caused the deluge.
There were three weather events back-to-back in November –December.
They were not caused by climate change, and were caused by a
combination of the El Nino effect and an Indian Ocean-specific movement
of warmer currents towards the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu. This kind of
event has happened before, and will happen again in future.
The linkage to climate change comes with the prognosis that there can
be more such events in the future. The Fifth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that there could be more
extreme weather events in the future. The Tamil Nadu State Action Plan
on Climate Change, on the other hand, predicts that though the number of
cyclones may not increase, they would increase in their intensity.
For those who went through the Chennai floods, the linkage with
climate change does not matter. For them, the reality was that the water
rose quickly, without warning, and in it they lost all their earnings
and belongings. Some lost their family members to the rising waters. The
insult to injury was when the administration opened the sluice gates of
the reservoirs upstream of the city without adequate warning.
Weeks after the floods, the city is getting back to business as
usual. A rather unusual advertisement was on the front page of
newspapers a couple of days ago. A builder was making a mountain out of
the molehill fact that his proposed apartments stood on ground that did
not flood during the rains. We know how to make money out of every
situation.
The city newspapers carry reports on the ongoing music festival. Even
while we lose ourselves in the soulfully divine music of the Margazhi
season, let us remember of the tens of thousands like Murugan for whom
life changed that morning in early December. Move on we must, for that
is what life is about, but let us at least ensure that we don’t want
into the same situation again.
Margazhi, Pongal and Deepavali, there will be enough reasons for us
to celebrate. But let us not forget the lessons that 2015’s rains taught
us. If we do not put systems in place to ensure that what happened does
not happen again, then we haven’t learnt from our lessons.
Let us not mistake our ability to cope with the floods as our
resilience. That will be a costly mistake. We coped because we had to.
But building resilience is not about us as an individual or a community.
It is about systems, protocols, delegation of authority and
accountability. It is about being prepared, for the waters may rise
again – when we have just about forgotten 2015.
Let us accept that we forget about our wastes as soon as we dump it
in the bins, or around it, not realising that this itself comes back to
cause diseases after the rains stop. Let us accept that we have messed
up our tanks, lakes and marshlands, which could have otherwise served us
as water balancing structures during heavy rains.
Let us also accept that we did not have a system to deal with the
situation such as what happened. And we never demanded that such a
situation be put in place.
Worse, if even after having lived through the floods we continue to
avoid demanding for it, then let us accept that we are not willing to
learn our lessons.
It will be a sufficient achievement if 2015 made us acknowledge and
accept these inadequacies. As we hang new calendars on our flood-stained
walls, we can start with the process of ensuring that this does not
happen again.
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